Weird Dreams in West Philadelphia

In the midnight streets of Philadelphia the remnants of the heat beating off the blacktop burns the bottom of your shoes as you walk. It’s the first day of July and the heat covering West Philadelphia is too much. The heat has brought an immense amount of violence. I just sit on my stoop each night trying to fight off from going to sleep and avoid any of the madness that happens on Baltimore Avenue late at night. The bodies are too much. For me it’s not just because I know the people who died, but when I close my eyes I can see the faces of those bodies, and when I go to sleep I can feel their souls.

My family has long had a tradition of being able to speak to dead people in our sleep. My me-mom told me that to have somebody in our dreams all we had to do was meet them, and then when they passed they gained the ability to be in my dreams.

My dreams were are so vivid. I did not interact with these people in normal conversations when I was in my dreams. I did not hear what they had to say so that I could tell their families that they miss them. Or to let their wife know that they were waiting for them. No. Instead people would do the most deranged things that they could not do in their own life. I can see, hear, touch, and feel people’s darkest actions that is trapped in their imaginations while alive but come to fruition in death.

One time while I was sleeping I observed a man named Travis Dunnst rape four younger women. I hadn’t seen Travis since we graduated from Overbrook High School together. One of the girls was this angelic young girl I met while attending CCP. She could not have been older than 19. In my dream I am walking down the entrance to the El in Center City. I turn the corner just passed the Dunkin Donuts to observe a dimly lit corridor behind the poorly supported sheetrock the construction workers use to mask their everlasting work and boom, there he was. Travis was ripping article of clothing off by article of clothing. He begins to hold her down and handcuff her ankles to her wrists. As he does this I sprint over there to assist the girl. I am running and then boom. I am hit in the back of my head by Travis’ best friend from high school Colin Kieferen. When I woke up the woman is bloody next to me barely breathing, but they chose to uncuff her ankles from her wrists. Only now to have our wrists cuffed together so that she was attached to me. It was so real. I can still hear her gasps for breath as I sit here.

These types of dreams persist night after night. I hope they stop, I don’t want to go to sleep…